Monday May 14, Day 6
This was it. The day had finally come to exchange the freedom of our rental jeep for a water taxi and trap ourselves on a small sandbar with hundreds of other tourists.
But first, there is one small matter of business from the day before, Sunday, that I neglected to mention in the last post…A matter that had and still was to dog us for most of the trip: reservations at an unnamed hostel on Caye Caulker. In short, I had them and I needed to change them from 2 nights to 1 night since we had opted to spend more time at a better looking Airbnb.
Unbeknownst to me, this would turn out to be the worst hostel experience in all my travels. I had already emailed the hostel a few times to cancel (no reply). I had lost social credit by asking to borrow a former host’s phone to call the hostel (no answer). So now I was going to their San Ignacio branch in person…and I waited around for about 20min (in the friendly company of a few pot smokers) for a half clothed probably high clerk to get off the phone with his mother, for after all, it was Mother’s Day. This same fellow assured me in laid back tones that everything would be taken care of and that he would personally make the call to change my booking so I wouldn’t get charged. My confidence in him only slightly wavered when he said, waving a dismissive hand, that he didn’t need my name but would write it down if it made me feel better.
Did he make the call in time? Would we budget minded travelers be overcharged? And was the clerk really even a clerk? The answers to those exciting questions will have to wait.
But first, there was one more archeological site. Cahal Pech is conveniently located just outside the city limits of San Ignacio so that busy travelers can learn more about history. In my opinion, it was very thoughtful of the builders to think of us because we only had a few hours that day. The foreign names of archeological sites always sound so cool. Cahal Pech… it must mean something grand or perhaps mysterious or perhaps it was the name of an ancient king who ruled this region in ancient times. I was a little disappointed to learn that Cahal Pech actually means “place of ticks” in modern Maya. The name is usually explained by noting that it “refers to the fact that the surrounding area was once used as pasture land.” Obviously, this is a blatant dodge since the site wasn’t named “place of livestock.” Thankfully, I am vigilant when it comes to ticks and was prepared to fend them off. I’m pretty much like Tomb Raider in that way.
The alternative is that whoever named it probably just didn’t want to be bugged by visitors, though, if he were really clever he would’ve also named a nearby swamp something like “relaxing paradise”…the old Iceland-Greenland trick of legend.
Cahal Pech is comparatively small (2 acres) and not much visited, however, it is old – probably the oldest site in the Belize River Valley. Experts have narrowed the precise settlement date down to sometime between 1500 and 1000 BC, making it Preclassic. Nowadays we get a little uppity if someone guesses our generation wrong (“how dare you lump me in with Millennials!” says the Gen-Xer).
Being from a relatively new country, the history of which is shorter than the window given for the settlement of Cahal Pech, I can hardly imagine such large stretches of time…like the 2000+ years it was occupied. The site was finally entirely abandoned in 850 AD.
Before that, it was the royal acropolis-palace of an elite Mayan ruling family who lived here during the Classic period. There were seven plazas and over 30 structures including temples, residential buildings, ball courts, an altar, and a sweat-house.¹
To my eyes, it certainly did look more residential. There were several narrow rooms with what looked like stone beds. Apparently all the rooms were long and narrow because they used a vaulted or corbelled arch which couldn’t span wide spaces like true arches can. Thankfully, according to a sign in the museum, the hallway rooms “were not a major concern of the ancient Maya” since the hot and steamy climate meant they could do most things outside. As someone who lives in an 8ft wide Airstream, I couldn’t agree more. Being able to stretch without touching a wall is overrated.
Vaulted ceiling – Cahal Pech
The next most surprising thing about the architecture involved what was underneath it – relatives. Apparently, the Maya buried their dead family members under the floor of the family house – see photo of sign. I assume that the scientists must’ve found plenty of houses with skeletons in the closets, so to speak, and concluded it was normal. Either that or there were a lot of least favorite relatives being quietly knocked off.
Vaulted ceiling – Angkor Wat
In the end, we didn’t see a single tick so I assume that other tourists must’ve come before us or if not, perhaps they were waiting for that bus of school kids that arrived just as we were leaving. So ended our archeological explorations. It was time to maroon ourselves on the sandbar.
I need to end this post by noting our harrowing drive east to Belize City, the courteous drive to the docks by the rental company, and our hour long crowed ride in the water taxi to Caye Caulker (“caye” pronounced “key”).
The only extra things to point out about those is a reminder that although the police do not enforce speed limits, several well placed, cruelly high speed bumps do. I imagine that those speed bumps keep all the tire and suspension shops that we saw open, thereby stimulating the economy.
Also, the Crystal Auto Rental just outside Belize City (not the Airport office) will drive you to the airport or docks for free which was very handy.
And as for the water taxi, I am sad to say that it cost $18 each. Foreigners pay more. Considering that in Cambodia I paid $15 for an 11 hour bus ride and that an 8 hour ride on the D train in China was about $30, this 1 hour ride was a blow.To Belize Express’s credit, it was a fancy boat…oddly fancy actually as if it had been taken from Sea World and plopped into a fishing harbor. Much too fancy for us. The next fanciest boat I saw was a cruise liner in the distance.
Next time: the hostile hostel lady…